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Rowan's Journal
Entry One It turns out, that river boats don't make me as sea sick as ocean-going vessels. It's been a harrowing few days. Walking across campus a few days back, I found myself lying in an alleyway somewhere in Portland. Not Oregon, but somewhere in the Human Empire, neither great nor bountiful, Christopher Eccleston be damned. With me in the alley were a few others that seemed as out of place as I felt. Luis, who reminded me immediately of all of the jocks that wedgied me in high school, Will, who looked and smelled like a homeless man, but sounded like one of my Philosophy professors, and on the roof nearby, Nick, who claims to be a world champion surfer and is definitely a world class pothead. All-in-all, not bad guys, but just as confused as I was to be there. Before we managed to get anything figured out, we were approached via rooftop by another man, seemingly local, named John. He helped us get our bearings a bit, tried to explain where we were, and eventually showed us that we were on a different world, which he referred to as "Planet." There don't seem to be any mind worms around, so we've got that going for us, which is nice. After explaining the danger we were in, namely that people in Portland without documentation of citizenship tend to be sold at auction as slaves, John took us into the sewers and gave us a quick run down on things like picking locks. A thief! An honest to goodness thief, talking about magic and oppressive government regimes in a 3000-year-old Empire. How awesome is that?! We even found silver and copper coins down there, in a room hidden away by a group of abolitionists he claims are mostly elves and dwarves. Friggin' Elves and Dwarves! Of course, along with all of that wonder was the realization that this was all too real. I didn't get knocked unconscious by a stray football. Within the hour, John was dead at the hands of the city guard, who claim he was leader of a thieves' guild. I was able to abscond with his dagger, and Nick grabbed his coin purse, and with luck and a lack of heavy armor, we managed to evade arrest long enough to charter a boat downstream to a city called Oakland. We mourned John as best we could, considering how little we knew about him. It's been two days now on the river, and we've seen the most amazing things. Aside from untainted countryside, we were accosted yesterday by a goblin. A real, live goblin. The boatman claims he puts up with them all the time and finds them to be pesky thieves that are better off killed, but unanimously, the rest of us agreed to let it go after it nearly killed itself swimming through the wake of the boat's magic oars. The oars move on their own, ceaselessly. It truly is magic. And if that hadn't been enough to convince us, what happened today most assuredly did. As we were sailing along today, we were approached by a river fairy. She was exactly what you would expect a river fairy to be. In a word: amazing. She got along swimmingly with Nick, who being a surfer, seems rather fond of the river. Even Luis seemed to warm up to her after a while. The boatman, once again, seemed to feel her presence was commonplace, though I got the feeling he was interested in the conversation. After a bit of talking, she retreated into the water and returned with a small pearl, which she gave to Nick and bade him eat. Most likely hungry from all of his marijuana consumption, he did so, and almost immediately passed out. He's still alive, but as yet he hasn't wakened. She spent a little longer in discussion with Luis (who was also high at the time), convincing us Nick would be okay, then kissed the big man on the cheek and disappeared into the current again. I don't know where we are, but I do know that this seems to be everything I've always dreamed of. This is the truth behind the stories and games I've spent my life immersed in. The others are confused, perhaps even looking to go home if we can survive, but I can't imagine wanting to leave here. I've heard stories of elves and dwarves, gnomes and orcs. Dragons! They have dragons. I could die happy eaten by a dragon. I'd rather not though, - Rowan Cumberbatch Marchish Local, maybe July15 2015 Terran? Entry Two Things are getting stranger and stranger, and yet more and more amazing with each passing day. It hadn't occurred to me before that we don't know how we understand the people here. Surely they're not speaking English. At the very least, the writing is nothing I've ever seen before. Our fourth day on the boat, with Nick fully awake again and content with the amazing watery dream he'd had, we went through the supplies we'd brought with us. According to the boatman, he'd been commissioned to bring them to Oakland by the same John we'd seen killed. With him dead and apparently involved in some shady things, we felt it necessary to find out what we were being hauled with and found a collection of very nice (possibly masterwork, I honestly have no idea) daggers and a collection of papers. We were unable to read them, but our sailing friend translated. "To whom it may concern, the time is nigh when we will set free all of those wrongfully enslaved. Prepare for the third frost. -M" Obviously, none of us have any idea what it means. Even the boatman seemed completely in the dark. We threw them all overboard, assuming it was something illicit, and got checked in in Oakland by some sort of port authority. They seemed disinterested. Without much hassle, we were able to get direction to a good inn from them, and found our way the Barking Dog. I tried my first ale. It was terrible, but I couldn't help but have a smile on my face through it all. I almost got up and performed a song for the room like a regular Peregrin Took. The next morning, we were ready to head to the local magistrate. We'd been told a few times that the only way to become citizens of the Empire was to own land, and that after a recent Orcish invasion, there was plenty of land nearby open for the taking for cheap. Before we were able to leave the Inn though, Nick brought in from outside a young girl named Amy, obviously another Earthling like us. High schooler, I'd say. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser. When we did make it to the magistrate, he offered us as many acre as we'd like for 6 silver apiece, plus extra for processing. When pressed, he offered to waive the processing fee if we would do some work for him, then sent us down into the sewers (again!) to check on the water processing plant. He gave us a crystalline device to detect the magic in the area. A young slave boy named Timmy was to be our guide. Nice kid. A bit quiet. He was the first to show us how poorly slaves are treated in the Empire, if only by his shock that we seemed willing to touch him and listen to what he had to say. Anyway, after a run-in with the some R.O.U.S.es, we made it to the room we were supposed to find and the crystal started glowing a deep red. Across the room from us was a very strange statue of an angel with a burning torch. After close inspection, it looked it had been moved. All of those years of Zelda came in handy and Luis and I moved the statue to the side to open up a secret room hidden behind it. And that was the least disturbing thing we found down there. Inside the room was two coffins and an iPad, all of which must've been a thousand years old. The people in the coffins were wearing polyester. The iPad was more advanced than anything I'd seen and when Luis picked it up, it basically disintegrated, leaving on nothing but the SD card. We managed to plug it into Luis's iPhone and among the .mp6 files were some journal entries dated presumably 2041. They were written by someone named Tara, who also found herself in this strange place, obviously from Earth, but she was approached by locals who seemed to know where she was from. From what we gathered, she gave them designs for the sewer system and water treatment facility we'd just toured, but was killed and interred in the chambers built for her and someone else. The mystery gets deeper and deeper. On our guard, we talked Timmy into keeping all that he'd seen a secret. I'm not sure how far we can trust him, especially considering he seems to be beat pretty regularly, but we'll have to hope he keeps his side of our bargain. We bought 100 acres of land (I tried to convince the others that we should also buy Timmy, but they felt we could do more to help by buying the land now and using it to help him later), and gained citizenship to the Human Empire. The magistrate offered us a few more quests, including checking in on a nearby lumber camp and delivering a parcel to the Church of the God of Order next door. That last one seemed easy enough, so the box was strapped to Luis's wrist and we headed over. I stayed outside, but the others went in to watch the end of what seemed to be a rather boring sermon. After a few moments, Amy started giggling uncontrollably and Luis started very loudly preaching the Gospel. I peaked my head in to find out what was going on as Nick ducked down to hide behind his surfboard. It seemed obvious that Amy and Luis were being mind controlled, so I rushed, dived over a pew, and tackled Luis in my most heroic moment yet (and finally living out a dream I've aspired to since elementary school). It turns out, the magistrate gave us an enchanted (or cursed?) item to give to the church as a prank. As penance, we spent an hour sweeping the floor before rushing back to the magistrate. We were all upset, but Luis was furious. He threatened the magistrate with bodily harm if he ever got us involved in such a thing again and I swear the man must have shat himself. Timmy left a puddle on the floor. I'll admit, he scared me too, but I blame years of conditioning. Needless to say, we got paid well for it and retreated to the inn to figure out what to do now. We have a few options in front of us and no one's sure where to go with it. Life on "Planet" seems to have a lot in store for us. Between petty politics and a potential faction that may or may not kill us for our knowledge out there somewhere, we may be less safe even than we'd originally assumed. -Rowan Cumberbatch Mid-spring, I think locally. July 17th, 2015, maybe, Earth-time Entry Three Understandably, we were in no hurry to go about the Magistrate's other task. Instead we decided to spend a week exploring the town separately and learning what we could about our situation. From what I've pieced together of the others, Nick spent most of the week working at the dock and having strange dreams about a bird, Luis got in a bar fight and perhaps had an unfortunate experience at the slave market pens, and Amy worked for a local hunter's guild until she had a bad run-in with a goblin. Will doesn't seem to have done much of anything, but I've come to believe that he's slipped into his natural state. I spent my own time in study when I wasn't singing for the common room. At the local library I found a very interesting book. It is another journal kept by someone from Earth that was in Portland sometime in the 2800s. Along with some interesting information about what life was like back then and a few similarities with the last one we found, there was an attempt at a written translation of English into the native common writing system. My belief that the people here are not actually speaking English and we are not actually speaking their language has been strengthened by all of this. Perhaps some magical force is translating for us, but to what purpose? Of course, the same question could easily be asked of our presence here. None of this is coincidence. This has happened before to people from different times in Earth's timeline, and something is up, but we have no way of discovering what or who as of yet. Mystery after mystery. After I spent a few days familiarizing myself with the written language and copying the journal, I returned the book and headed to check on what kind of responsibilities we had as land owners. Long story short, our only real responsibility is to pay taxes, which is fine by me. I had quite the experience there, though, and it was deeply disturbing. The only person working was a slave woman named Rebecca who seemed worried by my presence. I've learned to walk softly around slaves already, but being alone, I did my best to treat her like the human being she is. I was polite, I asked instead of told, and no matter what I said, she seemed more and more uneasy as time went by. This confused me until the pieces came together. She was afraid, alone as we were with no one likely to interrupt us, that I might force myself on her. This realization filled me with righteous anger of course. Not at her, but at the system that allowed for such fear. I shouldn't have, but I found myself telling her my thoughts on slavery and how wrong it was and vowing that I would never do such a thing or allow such a thing to happen, but she didn't seem to believe me. Unsurprisingly, she too is owned by the Magistrate, adding another item to list of reasons to hate the man. With the information I needed and the concern that I was only going to make her life worse, I left with a bad taste in my mouth about the whole ordeal. Eventually, despite his being a royal bastard, we did head to the lumber yard to check for the magistrate. What we found was an empty house and corpses, presumably the foreman and his associates. There was a watery blue bird there that Nick was certain was the bird from his dreams. We also managed to find some gold and a few axes left behind from those who attacked it, but as we were trying to find out what was going on, Will was shot twice through the doorway. Nick drug him away and closed the door. Luis drew his dagger and readied himself, with Amy doing the same thing with her gun. I decided to barricade the door until we knew what was going on, but ended up with a rapier blade coming through the door and into my shoulder. Luckily, the melee didn't last much longer. When the got through the door and Amy hit one of them with her gun, the rest shrank back and we soon learned that they were abolitionists who had attacked us because they thought we were slavers. We explained our position and convinced them that we were friends, even going so far as to offer to lie to the Magistrate for them (not that it was a terrible imposition). While we were talking, Nick managed to magically heal Will even, so that's a thing. Seems like our favorite surfer has indeed found his wave, but not a talent for innuendo. (lolz...) With Will strapped to a chair and the foreman's house burning to the ground, we headed back to town. Lying to the magistrate was simple enough after we dropped Will off. He didn't pay as much as he could have, considering how much my shoulder was killing me at that point (though the weed we smoked walking back helped with the pain once the coughing subsided). We decided it was time to check out this land we'd bought and began preparing for a trip. We bought all of the necessary supplies, but weren't sure what to do when we got up there. The idea of building a log cabin on our very heavily forested land seemed like a good one, so Nick and I went out to find a carpenter to help us. Considering our time constraints and our budget, we were almost immediately to the slave pens. Obviously, no one was excited about the prospect, but we walked out of there with Nick having paid three gold for knowledgeable carpenter with a lame hand referred to as "Old Ted" though he didn't seem that old. I left him to go book passage and was able to find a ship called the Dainty Dwarf (an oxymoron? haven't seen a dwarf yet to verify) for the next day. He seemed to think we'd been screwed in the land we'd purchased, but gained a bit more respect for me when I managed to haggle him down on his asking price. When I got back to the inn, all of the building supplies had been purchased as well as a very nice meal. Luis, understandably, was upset at the fact that we (and by we, I mean Nick) owned a slave. Aside from the utter destruction of a goblin and the fact that the Dwarf's captain personally kept up the magic on his boat from his spellbook (a real life friggin' wizard. Squeeee?), the two day trip from Portland out our land was uneventful. Nick and Luis spent it trying to make friends with Ted. I spent it trying to make friends with the captain and the cook, the two most important people on any vessel. None of us had much luck. We were dropped off at the tip of our land, near the ancient keep amid the ruins around midday. On the trip around the keep's walls to the entrance, we explained to Ted our plans to build a house here and our hopes that he would help us, then took his collar off. He seems to think we're crazy for freeing him and asking for his help, but for now he's helping and will be paid for his help. We went to the edge of the woods and he began showing us how to fell lumber. He and Luis continued the task while Amy set up camp and Nick started fishing for dinner. I went about exploring the keep. There was some ancient text on the walls that seemed to say something about a great freeze, I think. Aside from that, there was a staircase I found leading down. When we all got back together to eat, I mentioned the stairs to the others, pointing out that it would be best to know what was down there so nothing sneaked out in the night. At the bottom, there appeared to be a crypt, complete with three animated skeletons. Luis and Nick freaked out. While I was less help in the actual fight than I could've been (because of course skeletons aren't really hurt much by daggers), I do feel like I kept my head better than the others. A broken scimitar across the chest though, is good enough reason not to try that again without proper equipment. Still, Nick was able to patch me up by spraying me with his wave (lolz again) and here we are. The ground isn't as comfortable as it could be, but I'm unwilling to try camping in the woods where we could be found by who knows what. It'll be a while before we can get this cabin built, but we're making a start. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting. -Rowan Cumberbatch Beginning of Summer, according to the boatmen July 28? 2015. Is there even a point in trying to keep the date? Entry Four Looks like I was right. The cabin is basically put together now, with Luis even making some basic furniture for us under Ted's supervision. We spent quite a bit of time working on various projects to get all of this together. About a week after we'd arrived, Luis noticed that Amy seemed ill. Nick was away on a fishing trip and neither of us know much of anything about healing, but he was determined to do what he could. After searching through his tablet for information, he tourniquetted her arm to spread the gangrenous infection from spreading, but it didn't seem to be helping. With nothing else to turn to, he started to pray. Me, I don't dabble much in the divine, but I'll be damned if it didn't work. He'd been acting strange at night, and apparently some divine being or another had made contact with him and was willing to work their mojo through him. No thank you, I'd say, but to each his own. He did manage to cure the disease, but Amy hasn't gotten better yet. We fear the worst, but there isn't much we can do. When Nick returned, he noticed that the barricades we'd put over the entrance to the crypt had shifted. We felt it best to check out what was down there, armed now with crude staves and clubs to better combat the skeletons. To no one's surprise, that's exactly what we found: a mausoleum full of more skeletons. As we were destroying them, another person walked down the steps and started shooting at them himself. With the skeletons gone, we learned that the man was another one of us, a Texan named Sebastian. Ted had told him where to find us when he wandered into camp, but the fact that he knew we were here worries me still. Beyond the skeletons we found a smaller room guarded by a skeletal fucking owlbear. Skeleton. Owl. Bear. With Nick and Luis wailing on it and Sebastian and I shooting at it (Luis gave me his gun like it was a good idea), it was less of a problem than we expected it to be. What we found in the room beyond was totally different. How do I even begin to describe the feeling of malignance emanating from that room? There were glowing blue pillars inscribed with mystic runes and a huge alter at one end oozing a red mist. We tried to make sense of the place, but Luis's new evil-detecting abilities just gave him a headache and the rest of us were a bit overwhelmed as well. We did some experiments with the alter and anything that hit the center of it vanished without a trace. With some grasp of the written language, I attempted to decipher the runes on the pillars and suddenly found myself across the room in front of a few buttons, with everyone asking me what I'd done. I hadn't done anything. Or had I? Was I mind controlled? Regardless, the mist was gone. Nick ran back upstairs and threw a dead fish at the alter to test it. Its blood coalesced into the alter, causing it to ooze mist again and a tiny demon attacked us. Will wonders never cease? I can only assume that this is the room Tara mentioned in her own journal. We heeded her advice and, after turning off the alter again (we hope), we barricaded the doors as well as we possibly could, bringing lumber from the surface and all of the sarcophagi against the doors to keep hopefully anything from coming out or going in. With instructions for Ted to stay away and look after Amy, who was still fading despite our best efforts, we decided we needed to go to Seattle for help. We leave in the morning by foot, hoping to flag down a passing ship within a day or so. On a personal note, fighting demons and skeletons and such has given me an odd perspective on things. I didn't exact hate my life back on Earth, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't still excited to have the opportunity to live out this fantasy, but things are dangerous here, in a way we've never experienced. This isn't a video game or a session of D&D. My knowledge of those things may come in handy, but they may also lead me astray depending on how similar this is to that. I think we all feel a bit lost, and that feeling, for me, is only getting worse. But we'll make the best of it. These are good guys I'm with, even Ted (who is still more upset by that whole buying him thing than he really should be). There is hope for all of us, provided we don't get dragged into the machinations of the group that seems to have targeted those that came before us. Unfortunately, as time goes on, I feel there is less and less likely a chance of staying away from them. Of course, if all goes to plan, we'll be drawing attention to ourselves soon enough, I suppose. Entry Five Amy is dead. Sebastian is probably dead. Hell, even Ted is likely dead. And here I sit, watching an infernal timer tick down until I have to press a button again. I don't know how far the others trust me down here on my own with a writing only I seem able to read, but I'm not sure how far I trust them any more either. Good god, we're all in so far over our heads we don't even know which was is up anymore. The trip to Seattle went basically as planned, in that there wasn't much of a plan to begin with. We did, eventually, manage to find a ship after a few days of walking. I can't speak for the others, but I didn't see much of the city myself. We headed immediately to the mages' college and were directed to a Professor James in the library who looked vaguely familiar. It took a few moments, which seemed to annoy him, but eventually we realized he was, in fact, Jamie James, not-quite-star of the copper screen. He'd been here about as long as we had and had been mistaken for a wizard when he arrived. In the mean time, he seems to have made good on it and actually learned magic of a sort. He seemed willing to return to base with us and take a look at the portal, but got called away to do something for the college. After a night of intense research in the library while the others where out doing whatever is the others do (and learning basically fuck all, I might add), I awoke to accompany him to a nearby cave held by bandits who'd stolen some dangerous magical artifacts. We had a bit of trouble with the bandits, but managed to barricade a few of them and their leader in a room for the night and get some fretful sleep before letting them out in the morning. Nick was able to "befriend" the orc who led them, though not before he managed to eat the men we locked in there with him. Thog happily removed his armor and gave up his greataxe. Jamie ran back to town with the artifacts and we headed back toward base, with Thog accompanying us for a few days, usually high as a kite. At one point, he pretty effortlessly took out his munchy problem on a passing goblin. We were all a little disturbed by this, naturally, and less and less okay with it. The showdown was less of a showdown than we expected. Turns out, no matter how awesome an orc may be, with no armor or weapons and being attacked 4-on-1, they go down without much of a fight. I would feel worse about it if I hadn't seen him eating a person. For a few days afterward, everything was fine. Then Nick noticed a skeletal crow following us. It led us through some pretty disturbing dead forest full of other skeletal animals and to a decrepit tower. The owner of said tower was a flamboyantly homosexual elf lich named Ralph working on a smoother transition to lichdom. It was an interesting experience, as he seemed quite nice despite the whole being undead thing. Luis seems unable to get past that, unfortunately, but kept quiet as we discussed a business arrangement wherein we were given the option to send him test subjects and he would send us money. We didn't expect that to end the way it did. Anyway, we got back to the cabin to find it covered in blood. Amy had been killed by something coming out of her chest. Around back, we found Ted, who was close to death himself. We managed to stabilize him enough for him to explain that they'd been attacked by demons that entered through the mouth and carved their way out. To get rid of the pain, he'd promised his soul to the demon inside him, leaving an eternity of torment as his only reward for coming with us out here. Luis ran inside to check to see if Amy also bore the visible mark this deal left on a person (she did, unfortunately), and Nick and I explained that we may have a way to save Ted if he was willing to choose undeath over eternal torment. He took the deal and we slapped on the manacles Ralph had given him. He stood up, which he likely couldn't have done before, and disappeared through a portal, which opened a second later and spit out a clinking bag and another pair of manacles. It should be pointed out that Luis was not happy about this when he returned. I'm not exactly pro-undeath, though I don't see it as irrevocably evil like our goody-goody paladin guy seems to, but Ted made the right choice. At best, the Abyss is akin to the Christian Hell. At best. If it's anything like some of those books I read, an eternity of quasi-life is miles better than an eternity there. No contest. Regardless, one thing we could all agree on was the need to get down to the portal and figure out what was going on. The barricades were still in place, but the coffins inside had all been moved back to their original spots. This was creepy enough, but the portal had managed to reactivate itself. We got attacked pretty quickly by another demon that went straight for Sebastian's throat. Then down it. His hand went for his gun to just kill himself, but I'm not sure he could force himself to do it. Luis took out his dagger and started trying to stab it, through Sebastian, which sounds crazy except that I'm pretty sure he managed to hit it at least once. Between the three of us applying healing magic to Sebastian, we kept him alive long enough for him to voluntarily put his own wrists in those manacles and he was transported away. Another set of manacles and another bag of money, followed by a larger one, presumably for the still living demon inside of our friend, were all that we were left with. That and this hollow feeling. We've done what we can to study and stop the machine. For whatever reason, perhaps the experience I had with it last time, I find that I understand the language everything is written in. The machine automatically resets itself and comes back on in an attempt to reach the right plane. Currently, it's sitting on a roughly 10-hour countdown, after which someone will have to press the off button again. So we're taking turns. Luis, Nick, and Jamie are up there cleaning up and getting ready for Luis to head into town for supplies. I'm down here trying to figure out where everything went so very wrong. Even being able to read the words, I can't understand half of what these machine schematics are trying to say. I can't find a permanent off switch. What they were trying to do down here is noble, if maybe unwise, and (I firmly believe) an act of love. That it's been perverted into something so terrible and deadly is a real tragedy that puts Shakespeare to shame. Well. Maybe not. I suppose it would just be inspiration for him. Ralph, while his intentions might not be so pure, is doing much the same thing and some seem to believe with equally evil results. Magic seems to fuel this whole thing, no matter how scientifically based it seems. Well, all of us who are left wield magic of our own. Maybe we can solve, hopefully before something even more terrible happens. Everyone else's magic seems somewhat more useful than mine, though, I must say. I can heal, but not as well as Luis or Nick. What magic I've gained doesn't seem to be useful offensively. Or defensively. It's trivial. Frivolous. Oh god, I'm the party bard, aren't I?